Got a Hair Cut

Think think think…. last blog topic… oh yeah! I got a haircut a couple of days ago. It’s not bad I suppose, as my hair was getting quite long.

Was pouring down with rain at the time, weather has been quite strange lately… although I guess it’s summer after all. Nearly there… 11:35 pm and finished all my blog topics, good good.

Needs more padding out… hmm… my desktop’s hard drive crashed today which was pretty annoying, laptops aren’t very fun for typing, cramped fingers. Four assignments at once is also fun + exams around the corner.

Tried the new Mother drink, it is actually better than the old one.

and… Good Night!

IT Does Matter

Wrote an essay a while back which is a letter to the editor based upon the article “IT doesn’t Matter” by Nicholas Carr. Thought it was interesting to apply topics learnt in the Technology Management subject to try and refute that IT actually does matter.

Introduction

Nicholas Carr’s article “IT Doesn’t Matter” captures a number of shortcomings of information technology as he compares it to the hype cycle of past technologies. The major flaw however is that there is several distinguishable features between the railroad or power systems of the past and IT in its current state today. IT does matter and it has become a crucial tool in business strategy; decisions made can be the difference between the success and failure of a company.

Link to the essay can be found here.

Snake

My final Developing and Deploying Large systems assignment is to create the game Snake (although it is not typically a large system, we implement many procedures used to create large systems).

The stage I’m up to now (although it is still only a dot floating around the screen), has been using the Swing and AWT graphical user interface classes, action and key listeners, observers and threads (just to name a few). In a couple of weeks it should be complete, and I will post up the program source as it should be interesting to look back on.

Google Docs

Decided to use Google Docs for one of my group assignments in Technology Management. It has been holding up pretty well until now (although there is a couple of bugs still as it is still in Beta). Its main offerings are:

Create, edit and upload quickly.
Import your existing documents, spreadsheets and presentations, or create new ones from scratch.

Access and edit from anywhere.
All you need is a Web browser. Your documents, spreadsheets and presentations are stored securely online.

Share changes in real-time.
Invite people to your documents and make changes together, at the same time.

It’s free.

It also ties into the whole, cloud computing/web 2.0 methodology. It is very useful and I will most likely use it more into the future.

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is where data, software applications and services are accessed over a network. The network of servers and connections is collectively known as the cloud. When users retrieve data or documents, they aren’t worried about where it came from or how it got to them. Cloud computing gives the idea that the cloud hides the packets or the complications of the World Wide Web processes to achieve each task at hand.

Current state of cloud computing

Cloud computing has already changed the way users use the internet. Companies and users can now use SaaS (Software as a Service) and Haas (Hardware as a Service) on the internet. This is also known as Utility Computing.

A SaaS instance would be where Office Live Workspace provides a service to a user that allows them to save documents on the network. The document is saved using the Office Live Workspace’s drive space on the network. Once the document is saved on the network it can be accessed at any time, anywhere on a device that has access to the internet.

A HaaS instance would be where Amazon EC2 provides a service where companies can purchase drive space and processing power to install applications on the network. This way the company doesn’t have to use their own hardware space up. They can simply use the drive space that Amazon has provided them to install their application. The applications can also be accessed from any device with internet access.

Hamiltonian Cycles Program

In my Developing and Deploying Large systems subject we wrote a program in Java to take in a graph (a mathematical one, not the statistics one) and produce a set of all its Hamiltonian Cycles.

A Hamiltonian cycle is a path from a node to itself, passing through each node in the graph exactly once. This program makes use of worklist processing in order to produce all the Hamiltonian Cycles of a graph.

Additional rules from a standard worklist process are:
- Do not propagate paths longer than number of nodes.
- Do not add path to solution if will introduce cycle of length less than number of nodes.

Here is a link to the program source (couldn’t upload the file itself due to security restrictions…).

Green IT

Did some research on the topic of ‘Greening the Enterprise’ in my IT in Operations/Business processes subject. Wrote an essay and thought it would be a good thing to add to my blog.

Abstract

The topic of this research essay is based upon the question “What role can ERP, SCM and CRM play in greening the enterprise?” A number of IT vendors have already started to address this problem; these will also be addressed and discussed in terms of what they are doing for these concerns.

The methodology used has been largely directed through what has been learnt about ERP through the Business Processes/IT in Operations subject and including research carried out from a number of Internet resources.

The main findings were that there are numerous changes being implemented not only in government procedures but also through business and consumer support too. ERP, SCM and CRM play a large role in ‘greening the enterprise’ and without it difficulties with planning and creating environmentally sustainable measures would be too great.

The link to the essay.

Sails (Java on Rails)

As I know quite a bit more about Java and the idea of Rails was interesting, I thought it would be a good idea to investigate more about Sails (Jails sounds cooler though imo).

It seems very easy to implement, it is done by downloading the source and extending the JavaonRails class (similar of that to extending the java class libraries).

There’s a wiki, a download location and a bit more about what is actually is. Because its in java, it has the advantages of platform independence too.

Microsoft Popfly

Popfly is an easy way to build and share mashups, gadgets, games, Web pages, and applications. Popfly is currently in Beta stage of development.

The Popfly includes four tools based on Silverlight technology, which are described as follows.

Game Creator

The Game Creator is a tool that allows you to create your own game or extend a game already built. It can be exported to Facebook, or be used as a Windows Live Gadget.

Mashup Creator

The Mashup Creator is a tool that lets users fit together pre-built blocks in order to mash together different web services and visualisation tools. Also available is an advanced view for blocks, which allows users to modify the code of the block in JavaScript, as well as giving users flexibility in designing the programs. Additional HTML code can also be added to the mashups. A feature similar to IntelliSense, with autocompletion of HTML code, is available as well.

The Mashup Creator also provides a preview function, with live preview in the background as users link blocks. Tutorials are available, and error notices are given to users when incompatible data is sent between blocks.

Web Creator

The Web Creator is a tool for creating web pages. The user interface layout is similar to the ribbon user interface for Office 2007. Web pages are created without HTML coding, and can be customised by choosing predefined themes, styles, and color schemes. Users can embed their shared mashups in the web page. Completed web pages will also be saved in each user’s Popfly space.

Popfly Space

Completed mashups and web pages are stored on Popfly Space (100MB maximum per user), where users also receive a customisable profile page and other social networking features. Public projects can be shared, rated, or “ripped” by other users. Popfly allows users to download mashups as gadgets for Windows Sidebar or embed them into Windows Live Spaces, with some support for other blog service providers.

A First Look at Ruby on Rails

Rails was intuitive, however Ruby is not. Ruby on Rails was very easy to set up and the scaffold saved a lot of time. The hard part comes in where components need to be edited/added/removed. Making these revisions in Ruby has a slight learning curve in terms of its syntax and have not seen its programming style in other languages done before (even though it was supposedly based on Perl)

In terms of running it I used Instant rails, easily downloadable from the site. Design was conducted in Aptana with the Ruby (RadRails) extension. All and All, once past the initial hurdles not a bad experience.